MODERN EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 54, 22 July 1912, Page 8

MODERN EDUCATION.

WORLD-WIDE DISEASE. TOO MUCH HUSIi. TOO MANY EXAMINATIONS. . A lecture on some medical and health aspects of education was delivered in the Wellington Town Hall by Dr. Truby King recently. Dr King was introduced by Mr Mark' Cohen, chairman of the Education Commission, and those present included some of the leading educationalists of New Zealand.

The lecturer insisted that physical fitness was of primary importance in education. He denounced the habit of young people wearing boots or shoes that distort the natural shape and development of the foot and consequently the development of the whole body. He insisted on the necessity of an alteration in the system of education as it applied to girls, and quoted from a resolution passed by the Medical Association affirming the duty' of the State to frame an ideal system of education for girls, and the inversion of the present maxim that girls should be trained to maintain themselves and not to prepare for maternity. The first requirement of higher education for girls was to fit them for taking their places as wives and mothers.

The teacher insisted on the importance of teaching children to value fresh air in the development of the body. Most people considered physiology should be taught to the .higher classes, but their ideas of what the teaching should be were mainly wrong Even where physiology was taught one generally found that pupils knew nothing of its very basis—the composition of food. Surely if our higher education was right it would produce cleanliness in mind, body, and morals Many of the school buildings, in the matter of ventilation, were nothing more than sealed, boxes If the Education Commission could do nothing more than bring about the teaching of tpie nocessity for healthful living it would accomplish a great deal. Infants he would not allow to go to an ordinary school before they were seven years of age—certainly not before six. Open air teaching should be followed, and the. children should be given every facility for interesting exercises and recreation in the playground. He advocated jthe Introduction into) the schools of a simple primer on physiology. The whole world was suffering from the disease called "modern education," and the . sooner it got over it the better. There was too much rush in the present system, and too many examinations. Amongst other forms which Jie suggested was the regular weighing and measuring of pupils. The inducement to cram in the shape of scholarships should be done away with, while there should be a greater extension of technical trainfing, especially in regard to rural matters.